How to put icon to the right of the menu bar?

[Richard Gaskin]

Bob Sneidar wrote:

 > On May 31, 2012, at 10:16 AM, René Micout wrote:
 >> I have an application ready to work (a todo list...) and I want
 >> to trigger the opening of my application by clicking on an icon
 >> placed in the right side of the menubar (like spotlight, Time
 >> Machine, wifi, dropbox, etc...)
 >
 > Oh! LC has no internal way to do that. You would have to have an
 > app compiled in a different language that ran as a service and
 > created that menu. You could launch your LC app from that app.
 > But unless the menu provides some functionality, like launching
 > an updater, or turning on or off some functionality without your
 > LC app running, then there is no point to doing that. If all your
 > doing is launching your application, it would be just useless menu
 > clutter.
 >
 > You should probably read up on the UI guidelines Apple puts out.
 > There is likely a section for how those mini-menus should function.

I agree, the menu bar is not an app launcher.  For that we have the 
Dock, and LiveCode does provide ways to implement a menu for the Dock 
icon to provide features beyond just opening the app if needed.

Oddly, there seems to be little info in the HIG about how and when one 
should implement "menu extras", as Apple calls them, though typically 
they're used to provide access to services that are relevant across all, 
or at least many, application workflows.

For simply opening the app, consider this Dock (but don't have your app 
put its icon there by itself - that'll prevent it from being accepted in 
the app store).

The one note in the HIG I could find on menu extras notes that they're 
not guaranteed to be visible if the monitor isn't wide enough to 
accommodate them with an app that has a lot of menus:
<https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/userexperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Menus/Menus.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000356-SW1>

The Dock is the way to go for launching.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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